


the clock ticks slowly

by quibbler



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 08:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1738202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quibbler/pseuds/quibbler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whatever future about which they had fleetingly thought is destroyed by a phone call.</p><p>In which Leo Fitz doesn't finish his years at the Academy and Jemma Simmons does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the clock ticks slowly

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily inspired by awkwardspiritanimals' [tumblr post](http://awkwardspiritanimals.tumblr.com/post/87444168736/alternate-universe-where-fitzs-mom-gets-really), so really all credit goes to her! theblakesiblings on Tumblr requested this as a fic in some of her tags and she was also the lovely beta for this, who managed to catch all the dumb mistakes I made whilst writing this at work.
> 
> Canonically divergent in that they are separated during their years at the Academy.

When he picks up the phone, the last thing Fitz expects to hear is a stranger's voice, echoing in what sounds like sterile surroundings, telling him that his mother is in the hospital on account of acute bronchitis (another flare-up of her illness, he thinks), that she isn't doing too well. He hangs up the phone and hopes that it's a very, very bad dream and that he might wake up in a few moments, but when he punches the desk surface and feels the sharp pain shooting up his arm, his heart sinks.

The academic year is nearly over and they're halfway through end-of-term examinations but he knows that even if he can stay to finish them, he won't be able to come back next year, not if his mum is in the hospital--she is all he has left, now that his dad is gone.

 _You have Jemma_ , his brain reminds him traitorously, and he looks up at the ceiling, trying not to let his eyes water. She is his only real friend here, the one who managed to break down the walls he had erected years ago and he can't even begin to imagine leaving her. He has to, though, and the thought tears his heart even further.

\-----

When he tells her he has to leave the Academy, the last thing Jemma wants to do is cry. She wants to be strong and let her best friend take care of his mother, but some selfish part of her, deep down, wants him to stay to take care of her, too, like they had done for each other the past nearly two years. She bites her lip and nods, tries to show him as much support as she can muster.

She watches as he barely holds back misery thinly disguised as rage when he smashes a mug against the floor. He studies for his last exams some, but not as much as he would--his grades slip somewhere behind hers. To anyone else, he would still be excelling, but she knows him. He has always been her biggest academic rival and it kills her slowly to watch him suffer. She knows she needs to let him go, but her mind refuses to imagine a future without him by her side.

On his last day, Jemma wants to be brave and stay strong, to not cry as she stands in front of him, but she can't help it and the tears start rolling down her face. He looks close to tears, too, but he blinks furiously and looks away, and that only makes her rush toward him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and refusing to let him go. His arms find their way around her waist and he's holding onto her for dear life. She has her face pressed into his shoulder, trying not to make his sleeve all disgusting and failing, but then he turns his head, his lips just brushing her ear.

"I'm going to miss you."

She gives a strangled half-sob, half-laugh as she tries to breathe as deeply as she can , lifting her head, her eyes closed. "I'll miss you more." She pulls back and wipes her eyes and nose with her arm, wishing she could have kept it all together. Her hands are clasped in front of her and she chews on her lip.

There's a sad smile on his face. "That's not possible," he says, and before she can protest, he looks down at her hands, reaching for one with his. "We'll stay in touch, okay? And if you ever need me, you'll be able to find me. I'll send you everything so you can look me up."

When she watches as he boards a cab, his last words to her echo in her mind.

 _I'll always be there if you need me_.

\-----

He tells himself that this is only temporary, that working at a garage will at least keep him busy and earn him some money while he's home. His mother is out of the hospital and at home resting, but it doesn't mean that she's noticeably better. Fitz frets when he's home and tries his hardest to not be away for too long. Thankfully, Archie understands far more than Fitz expects him to, and he gets an hour and a half for lunch, and two additional 45-minute breaks. It means longer hours in total, but Fitz doesn't mind really. Or so he keeps telling himself.

The truth of the matter is that he is bored. Bored to death of tinkering with broken watches and televisions that he can fix within the hour. On the rare occasions he gets a project that requires serious work, it takes him a few hours and at least then he finds himself occupied enough to stop his mind from wandering too far. It will always go home, worrying about how Mum is faring in the sitting room, but a tough project will keep his mind from going to the one place he misses the most: the Academy.

It's uncommon, he acknowledges, for someone to miss a school. But he's still a teenager, albeit one with a PhD, and he misses learning. He used to excel and now he's at a standstill. But what he tries not to admit to himself is that more than the classes, he misses his best friend Jemma.

The first time she called him was the day following their separation and he had never felt so glad to hear her voice even though hardly 24 hours have passed. They talk for well, over an hour, at least two-thirds of the time talking over each other, and for a while, he thinks everything will be the same, just without seeing her every day.

The daily phone calls turn into weekly phone calls when fall term starts at the Academy, but he doesn't mind because those are supplemented with emails and the occasional letters. The emails are thorough and vivid as only Jemma can be and he grins like an idiot when he reads them, wondering how he can make his daily projects and dull routine sound as interesting as days at the Academy. She writes about the most interesting lessons she attends and how the latest experiment literally blew up in her face and she nearly singed off half an eyebrow, how she tried to invent something but only he could have made it work because she just doesn't have the mind for that sort of thing.

It's words like those that make his heart hurt.

The letters are often more abstract, sprinkled through with photographs of the campus filled with students, or the snow-covered, barren trees, or her posing with the latest disgusting dead thing she needs to dissect. (He doesn't even feel as disgusted as usual when he sees those because at least it means he can see her face.) Jemma's loopy, large script is scattered across the pages and it looks more like a page ripped from a scrapbook than a real letter, but he doesn't mind. He writes back when he isn't too exhausted from being at the garage all day and taking care of his mum in the interim. Fitz's letters are more verbose, with the odd description of a new invention he had in mind, and would she bring up the idea to one of the professors so they might bring it to life? He asks more questions than she has answers sometimes, and he doesn't mind. There are doodles across the back of each letter, sometimes done in pencil, of a tree he thought looked particularly nice one morning, sometimes done in ink, of the cat that keeps wandering in and out of the garage as though he bloody owns the place.

Fitz imagines the pencil smearing against her fingers as she reads the letter, her smile as she looks at the drawing of the cat and it keeps him from diving too deep into despair. He doesn't have much time for pictures, but sometimes he manages. He takes pictures of Glasgow when he has a night off and his mum insists that he take some time for himself, despite his vehement protests. His mum is more likely to pick up the old camera and snap a few shots of him when he's not paying attention: brows furrowed as he sketches; brewing tea; sleeping on the couch because he was too tired to make it up to his bedroom. (He doesn't share these photos because they're so silly, but his mum slips one in the letters occasionally, when he's not paying attention.)

This continues for some time and it becomes a routine, but it doesn't always work. He starts taking more and more jobs because Archie is getting on in age, his joints not cooperating as well as they used to, his eyes going fuzzy, his attention to detail fading away. Fitz is young and able and with more jobs means more money, and they need all that they can get. Glasgow catches the haphazard word of the young mechanic that can work wonders, and while it means business is good, it also means less and less time to talk to Jemma.

The phone calls all but stop. He knows that she's very busy at the Academy, being one of the best and brightest, and she still manages to write him emails, which is more than he can hope for. They are shorter, true, but he pictures her sitting at her computer, composing the email, and it quenches a small part of the ache that has permanently resided in his chest.

He is getting more efficient ( _somehow_ , he thinks in her voice, as though she were sitting there beside him teasing him for getting everything done so quickly) so in his free time, he sketches. He takes one of the carpenter pencils and the back of a forgotten receipt and recalls her, Jemma in all of her beauty and puts his pencil to the paper and draws. The curl of her hair when she has time to style it in the morning, the way her big, brown eyes light up as she recites some bit of information relevant to an invention, her smile when she's indulging a particularly ridiculous comment of his. When he's done, his eyes roam the page and he takes it home with him, buying a nice sketchbook with a sizable chunk of his day's earnings. Fitz pastes the drawing onto the first page, smoothing out the wrinkles, and he makes a vow to add at least one sketch every day so he doesn't forget her face.

\-----

She calls him the first day that they're apart like she did the previous summer, as though nothing had changed. The conversation continues for over an hour and she relishes every second of it, especially when they talk over each other and still manage to hold a conversation. (Her mother raises an eyebrow and hurries away to make tea while her father sits slack-jawed, trying to understand how anything could be heard over his daughter's non-stop chattering. Honestly, it doesn't sound like she's drawn a breath for the entire call.)

Jemma still feels the sting of his leaving in everything she does. She discovers something exciting at her summer internship and she turns to near-shout it at her partner, but he isn't there. She reminds herself that he's in Glasgow, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes before she steadies her racing heartbeat and returns to her microscope. She leaves the lab at precisely 4pm every weekday and immediately heads for the Underground so she can make her way home, where she can duck away for her alloted phone call time with one Leo Fitz.

When she returns to the Academy without him, she feels a hole in her existence that was never an issue before. She still fights the urge to turn and exclaim something in his general direction because his new general direction is Glasgow, and sometimes she gets too turned around in the building to know which direction Glasgow is in comparison. Phone calls are a rare treat and she misses him too much not to talk to him, so instead she resorts to her computer. Her email is open in front of her and she sits for a full three minutes before she decides what to write. She tells him about her day and how much she misses him, and how her latest shenanigans in the lab pan out, sometimes with-near disastrous results. His responses conjure up the image of him listening to her words, rapt and ready to interject and bicker with her and it's a poor substitute for him actually being there, but she'll take it.

Her letters aren't _letters_ , really, so much as interjections scribbled out on paper. She writes such detailed emails that she doesn't think Fitz wants to read the same thing over and over again, so she takes photographs instead, attaching them to the paper and writing her comments in the margins. Her favourite pictures are the ones of her with various preserved animals because she knows the look of disgust that will surely contort his features, but she tries to appease him ( _that is disgusting, Simmons_ , she hears his voice echoing in her mind) and includes pictures of other things, too. The boiler room, for instance--she takes pictures of herself sitting in a booth they often shared, pouting as though to say she misses him. (These pictures never make it into the letters because she looks back on them and thinks about how silly they are, but sometimes if it's late and she's had one too many drinks--a rarity or she'd be very close to alcohol poisoning--one will find its way into an envelope with no comment attached whatsoever.)

The emails get shorter as time goes on, when she's very busy working on new inventions--they would be better with his help, she knows--busy with graduating three years early, too busy to think sometimes, but she is holding on to the one part of him she has left with every fibre of her being.

When she gets stationed at SciOps, she wants to tell him everything, tell him that she misses him more than anything else in the world; that if he had stayed, they would be right beside each other; that she just wants to see him again and tell him how important he is. But she's under strict oath not to tell anyone about SHIELD operations unless it's vital to a mission or the department, and so she sighs sadly as she looks through the photographs she has left of him. All are worn and aged, but she refuses to toss them because a piece of her heart should not be sitting in a bin. There are only a few photos of them together, as she was usually the one taking pictures (several of him trying to duck from the camera or halfheartedly yelling at her to pay attention) but her favourite one is framed on her desk.

The two of them standing outside the Academy looking like they had known each other all their lives even though it had just been a year then, his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist, both beaming for the camera. This is how she chooses to remember him.

\-----

Archie retires after a few years of drawing out his weaning abilities and gladly sells the place to Fitz, who gives him an envelope with a modest check for his retirement gift. (Archie would have given it to him, free of cost, but Fitz insisted on paying him for giving him a steady job to care for his mother.) As strange as it is, Fitz doesn't mind working here anymore, not when he's got a steady flow of objects to fix, and especially not when he's allowed to take the used and abandoned parts to put together inventions. At some point, he used to send his sketches to Jemma, but now they all sit in sketchbooks stacked high on one of the tables in the garage.

Another set of sketchbooks is littered in front of him, and a closer look will show that each and every page has a sketch of Jemma Simmons to the best of his recollection, done in several media and sometimes no more than a pair of eyes or the back of her head, but without fail, he adds to the latest book every night when work is slow. His mother is better now, so he doesn't have to rush home and instead he spends an extra hour or two in lighting that can't be good for his eyes and takes whatever writing utensil that is readily available and draws. Each sketch is a way to remind himself of what she looks like because he refuses to forget her, even though there's a voice that sounds suspiciously like hers echoing in the back of his mind saying that the human mind and memory have a dysfunctional relationship and that the brain is so suggestible that memories can fade in and out with alarming ease. He ignores that part of his memory and draws her leaning over a microscope with her hair falling into her eyes instead.

Sometimes when he loses track of time as he draws and it's quite late and he's the last one at the garage, Fitz has conversations with her, or rather, with the memory of her. Perhaps he's going mental, but it's late at night when he finds himself smiling more, talking animatedly about some new design that could work but he can't be sure without her help. Sometimes he imagines he stayed at the Academy and was swept away with her--he hasn't heard from her in what must be eons and he knows that SHIELD has protocol, but it doesn't make it sting any less. He can pretend he belongs to SHIELD, though, and can picture standing beside her in a lab, arguing like they used to. Sometimes Fitz is content with just talking about how his day went and he can always piece together what she would say. He still knows her too well and the thought of that is a fresh, raw wound.

\-----

SHIELD keeps giving her partners and they keep disappointing her, unable to keep up with how quickly her mind works. They send her their best and she still leaves them in the dust, so instead she slowly starts doing the work of two people, refusing the new suggestions for partners. She will work alone if no one else is competent, and from then on, everyone knows that Jemma Simmons, the brilliant biochemist who hardly looks old enough to drive? She works alone.

She has a desk set up in one corner of the lab, but most of it is tables covered in top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art equipment, beakers filled with ongoing reactions, test tubes with various liquids capped or covered in Parafilm. On her desk, the papers are stacked neatly with labels identifying each pile, a Rubik's cube, a clean beaker to store pens and pencils, and a single framed photograph.

Jemma hates to admit that she has been carrying this photograph around for so long, but it soothes some rough patch of her soul to have it. She imagines having him work beside her, finishing her sentences or arguing with her until they both separate in a huff. None of the others hold a candle to him, and that is half of the reason why she refuses to work with anyone.

None of them _are_ Fitz.

Whenever she has visiting agents in the lab, she gives them a pair of goggles and nitrile gloves and instructs them to wait by the desk until she reaches a point where it's safe to stop. Inevitably, they all ask about the photograph and something in her face hardens, and when she says it's an old friend, her tone of voice seems acerbic enough to insist that more questions remain strictly unspoken.

Years later, when she feels world-weary and ready for a long-awaited holiday, she is personally asked by Maria Hill to join an elite team. Jemma is stunned that Agent Hill is standing before her, but even more stunned that they're requesting her for the job. She couldn't pass the field test despite trying once a year, and she certainly wouldn't be able to do so now. But she obliges to find that it's Agent Phil Coulson who is leading the team, a man once thought dead, and the biochemist in her nearly bursts with questions about how he survived. Instead, she visits a lab that is more or less _hers_ and she grins at the possibilities.

Their first mission picks up a hacker that belongs to the Rising Tide, and despite their differences, they become unlikely friends. Skye doesn't understand half of the words that spill from Jemma's mouth but she still manages to pick up a few things here and there. Skye asks about the picture and Jemma freezes, not wanting to go through this again, and she ignores the question. But the other girl is persistent, and one day, maybe weeks later, she asks again, and Jemma sighs. "His name was Fitz."

He can't keep living as a memory in the prison of her mind, after all.

As the days go on, Skye pries but doesn't push, and Jemma slowly starts sharing more. They were at the Academy together but he had to leave, they didn't like each other at first, he was the greatest lab partner. She finds the hole in her heart slowly starting to heal and maybe, just maybe it would be easier to let go if someone else knew how much he meant to her, how much she misses him still. She can't find a way to let go.

The radio dispatch tells them that there is an 0-8-4 in Mongolia and when they land, they're not expecting a machine like this. It looks foreign but not blatantly so, and she is fascinated but afraid to get too close. Coulson sends specs to SHIELD and two days later, after they've landed the Bus and conducted their own research, no one at HQ knows what to do with it, either, or what it does. Mysteries are a common thread for the agency, and she is about to throw her hands in the air in defeat and let her head rest against the holotable but suddenly an idea strikes her.

"Sir, would it be possible to make a stop in Glasgow?"

The incredulous looks of disbelief that reside on the faces staring back at her make her flush with embarrassment as she explains.

A simple Internet search was enough to find all of the mechanics in Glasgow and there is one that stands out, though the website is modest and has no pictures of its staff or any mention of him, but she has sent him letters and the address of the garage in question is so close to his childhood home that she knows it must be his.

The Bus lands in an open field and Jemma doesn't manage to wait for the van to pull up before she's walking off in the right direction, her heart pounding a tattoo against her ribcage. It's not incredibly far, but it's an unusually warm day in Scotland and she has to tie up her hair in a plait as she makes her way to a web of streets. A blink and you'll miss it sort of place, she had read, and she was hardly blinking as she reached the end of the street in question.

\-----

With the door shut, the garage is sweltering because Fitz hasn't quite gotten around to fixing the air conditioning, not when he's sitting at the table sketching again. His memory is starting to fail him, but her eyes are seared into his brain--

\--there are footsteps behind him and he frowns, ready to tell the offender off as there is a _closed sign_ in front of the door and the garage is only open because it's bloody _hot_ \--

\--when he turns around, he is frozen in place.

Her hair is longer, though it's bound up, and she has more freckles, but she is still pale with big, brown eyes and a wonderful smile and _perfect_. She is just as he remembers her but infinitely better, older but _here_ , actually physically within reach and he thinks his heart has stopped beating, he swears that he could die standing in his bloody garage, sweat dripping down his neck and gear grease on his fingers.

"You said--" she starts, breathless, and he holds his own breath so he can hear every word, "--you said that if I ever needed you, I could find you. And I--the team," she pauses, flushing crimson, and he thinks that she has never been more beautiful, "needs you." She wrings her hands and it hits him like a jolt of electricity when he remembers her nervous habit from nearly a decade ago and his mouth hangs open because she looks scared. She stands rooted to the spot and he wipes a rag across the back of his neck before his gaze meets hers.

His life seemed so out of focus before today, and suddenly everything is sharp and clear and it's all because of the woman in front of him, who was and is the girl that he loved though he spent years hiding it. She remembers him after all of these years and came to look for him even when he had almost given up hope and he opens his mouth to speak but words won't come.

\-----

This is a terrible idea.

Jemma is terrified. She may not be putting it into words, exactly, but she is bearing her heart and soul for this boy that she has loved since she was seventeen and she is terrified that he has forgotten who she is. She looks different, certainly, but so does he: her eyes wander and she notes that his hair is still as curly as she remembers it and his ears stick out just a bit, but his eyes are so much bluer and he isn't quite as thin as he used to be. She nearly shakes her head because right now all that is important is that he's here in front of her and she wants to wrap her arms around him and kiss him silly, but she can't move.

He drops the rag and her heart is pounding so quickly in her chest that perhaps it isn't pounding at all, instead frozen in dread that he doesn't remember.

Then he smiles at her and her heart is pounding in her ears and in her toes and she beams back.

**Author's Note:**

> ... I basically wrote about 600-800 words yesterday and then cranked out nearly 4k today. The way I see what happens next is that she reaches for his hand so they can walk back to his house and pack, and he can clean up, before they go find the team, and Coulson flips out on Simmons for leaving like that.
> 
> Angst is where my brain thrives, so this came a lot more easily than the fluff you're used to seeing me post!


End file.
